Saturday, 28 November 2015

I have written several times earlier on this topic. Today's writing is prompted by watching a video on Ahimsa silk. Mr. Kusuma Rajaiah has patented this technology of getting silk from mulberry silk worm without having to boil them.

Basically he buys cocoons from the market, allows the worms to escape and then send the cocoons to mills for carding and combing process to obtain the spun yarn.

In the documentary, weavers told that the yarn made by this technique is much finer and smoother than the filament yarn.

As a lot of cocoon filament is damaged in the process of escape of silk moth, the production cost is almost double than is obtained by other filament yarn.

All this is good. However, my questions are more rhetorical in nature regarding this:

1. From the last thousands of years of domestication evolution has made these worms blind and incapable to defend. Also they are unable to eat anything once they come out of cocoon. Which means if they are not dying of stifling, they will die of starvation or will be eaten away by birds. Which death is more severe and longer, who is responsible for it, and which one is more "Ahinsak" that is the question.

2. As almost double the cocoons are required for making a garment, it means we are letting double the moths starve or eaten away. Also there is a resource requirement to get it processed in factories. We are also snatching the livelihood that is obtained when manual operations of reeling and spinning.